SPIN YOUR FORMAT

There’s not been much good news out of the music industry this year, but reports that sales of cassettes in the U.K. through the first half of 2020 are more than double the same period last year certainly offers us pause for thought.

- DAVE THOMPSON

In truth, the bulk of this quantity (65,000, so don’t get too excited just yet) is based around the performance of new releases by Lady Gaga, The 1975, Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez and 5 Seconds of Summer. But the upcoming reappearance of the Rolling Stones’ Goat’s Head Soup in the format is certain to give that total a significant bump.

As part of the multi-format roll-out of a 2020 remix of the original 1973 LP, the cassette is probably the one that will be most overlooked; it’s a limited edition which is, at the time of writing, available only from the Stones’ own store. But the original album is one of the jewels in the Stones’ catalog (regardless of what anyone else might tell you), and while we still don’t know quite how the remix is going to treat our old friend, Spin Cycle’s advice would be to get your order in now. Oh, and dig out your old tape player, too.

Limited editions, whatever the format, do seem to be growing in popularity this year, although the jury is still out on whether it’s the fans who like them, or the record companies. And the latest dent in the David Bowie collector’s wallet is a case in point.

On release, Tin Machine II (the second album by his Tin Machine project, in case you were wondering) was greeted as one of the... there’s not really a polite way of saying this, is there? It was greeted as one of the most ghastly records the man had ever put his name to and, while worse would follow (Tin Machine Live), few people have ever argued with that pronouncement.